Tag: salbutamol

It’s been an odd month, but I’ve certainly spent quite a lot of it on my feet, which now resemble Sloth from the Goonies’ face. I’ve managed five hill days in the Lakes, with some of the actual route thrown in. I’ve also managed to get up to the dreaded half marathon mark in terms of distance. But perhaps the most significant update is that I’ve also discovered that I have exercise-induced bronchoconstriction (or exercise-induced asthma) – and in fact I’ve been needlessly battling it for years. I’ll go into a bit of detail, in case anyone reads this and realises that this could be them too.

Disclaimer: I will not be getting this tattoo

So, for a number of years I have found that during and after exercise, I have felt it hard to breathe. The best way I can describe it is that I can’t get to the top of a breath, as if something is preventing this being a possibility. My chest feels tight and I often have coughing fits after running, especially if it’s in cold air. I have always attributed this to just not being fit enough, but no amount of training seemed to extend my endurance beyond a certain point. It turns out that this is pretty common, and a salbutamol inhaler prior to a run can work wonders. And it has. I can’t believe the difference it makes! I also can’t believe that I’ve been struggling with this for as long as I have, without ever thinking about asthma. To be clear, I don’t have symptoms if vigorous exercise isn’t involved, hence the “exercise-induced” bit. Anyway, I’m now feeling confident that I will be able to continue extending my training runs and power to victory like Chris Froome (but without the probable cheating).

Does not fit well in shoes

I’ve also had a couple of people ask me about my training plan – how to get faster and run further – so here’s a quick overview of what I’m doing:

I haven’t put values in, because the idea is that they increase each week. For example, this week I will be doing 6 miles on Tuesday, 6 x 500m sprint + 200m recovery on Wednesday, 4 miles on Thursday, 90 mins on the cross trainer on Friday and 13 miles on Sunday. That roughly totals 32 miles, depending on how far I get on the cross trainer. If I want to up this, I add one or two miles to each regular run, and either 100m to each sprint or an extra repetition of the 500/200 set. When I was starting out, these were 350/100 sets. I have read that throwing in a speed workout each week is crucial to building up your pace, endurance and management of heart rate. Other than that, it’s pretty simple. Get used to running for a long time at a slow pace, and for shorter times at slightly quicker paces. For the big run, I’m aiming to be running at a very reserved pace (for obvious reasons) – around 10:30 per mile. My top 6 mile pace is 7.5 minutes per mile, so it’s all about control.

And that’s all I have to say at this point in time really. The Lakes recces have been really useful in terms of building up my uphill fitness and leg strength (and obviously great because the Lakes is beautiful), and I’m generally feeling OK about the whole thing. This may change in 7 weeks, when it’s only a week until my first ultramarathon of the year, of course. But that’s for Future Simon to worry about. Stupid Future Simon.